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Grace Blakely
NOTE: THIS PAGE CONTAINS SPOILERS! "There you go," I say my voice dripping with mock kindness. "Keep your chin up. Eventually, you will find someone who cares about your opinion. I'm so sorry that I'm not her." Grace to Lila. Grace Olivia Blakely is the protagonist and narrator of the Embassy Row series. She is American born but has Adrian blood on her mother’s side and has been sent by her father to spend some time with her grandfather in the American embassy. In "All Fall Down", she is sixteen years old, while the summer holidays are just beginning. Life When Grace was ten years old, she fractured her left forearm and five months later, dislocated her right shoulder climbing the tree outside the Officer’s Club in Fort Benning, an army base where her military father was once stationed. Two years later, she broke her leg jumping off the wall between the Canadian and the German embassies on the Embassy Row in Adria, to show her older brother, Jamie, that the fall would not kill her. At fourteen, she acquired two concussions in San Diego, where her father was currently based. She later broke her ankle in Alabama. Between her sixth birthday and her sixteenth, she attended seven schools. SPOILER ALERT IN NEXT PARAGRAPHS! When she was thirteen years old, the prime minister of Adria ordered one of his agents to assassinate Grace's mother, Caroline Blakely. The agent had been a lifelong friend of Caroline and therefore stayed loyal to her, deciding to fake her death instead of betraying her. Unfortunately, his plan didn't work at all. Grace saw her mother's faked death through the window of her antique shop, and she saw the agent photographing and then setting the building alight, as evidence to the prime minister. Grace, thinking he was endangering her mother, tried to shoot him with a gun that he had brought to the scene. Of course, her mother was indeed not dead and leapt up to save her childhood friend, taking every bullet that Grace fired. During Caroline's funeral, her father and grandfather exchanged words and her father after prevented she and Jamie from contacting her grandfather. He did not tell his daughter this and for three years Grace believed her grandfather had simply decided he did not want to bother with her. In these passing three years, Grace's mind made her forget what she had done and her family and friends did not have the heart to explain to her, although they all knew and forgave her for it. However, she did not fully forget and remembered the face of Caroline's friend and the scar he had got in her burning antique shop. For years she believed it was him, the 'Scarred Man', who had murdered her mother and kept on seeing disjointed flashbacks where she never quite got the whole memory. Grace accused various people of being Caroline's murderer and was thus often labeled as the crazy girl. It was for this reason that her father sent her back to Embassy Row three years later, when she was sixteen. All Fall Down Grace’s father sends her to Adria to be with her grandfather on Embassy Row. She immediately gets off to a bad start with a senior woman at the American embassy, Eleanor Chancellor. Trying to escape the embassy for some fresh air, she briefly meets a young German girl who scares her into going back inside. She also meets her brother’s old friend, Alexei, and a moment later accidentally punches the Russian Ambassador, almost causing an international incident. From the start of the book, Grace is set up as a character who always seems to be falling in to trouble. In the night, a boy from the Brazilian embassy befriends her and takes her to a secret party the embassy kids are throwing for the first day of the summer holidays. This boy reveals himself to be called Noah. Here she properly meets the young German girl and finds out that she is called Rosie. They immediately create a bond, Grace sticking up for Rosie when Noah’s older sister, Lila, demands that Rosie leave. When Rosie grabs Lila’s scarf, it blows onto the abandoned Iranian embassy and looks like the Israeli flag (being blue and white) blowing in the wind. Grace, despite protests from everyone, goes into the embassy to retrieve it but overhears two men meeting in secret. When she sees one of them, she believes him to be the man who murdered her mother as she recognises him as the man with a scar on his face: the ‘Scarred Man’ as she calls him. From here on, Grace begins following and tracking the Scarred Man with the help of her new friends Noah, Rosie and Megan. She attends a ball and finds out more about the Scarred Man. At one point it is revealed to her friends that she accused many people of being 'the man who murdered her mother' in the past but they never were. Her friends are briefly angry with her but soon they return to her side. The four discover that the Scarred Man works for the Adrian prime minister and is a very senior agent of his. Grace makes it clear who she believes him to be, much to her grandfather and Ms Chancellor’s displeasure. At the G20 summit, which is to be held in Adria, Grace believes someone is going to attempt to assassinate the prime minister. Instead, she finds out that the Scarred Man, Dominic, was in fact her mother’s childhood friend. Dominic takes Grace into the tunnels under Valancia where the prime minister suddenly appears. Dominic tries to persuade her to get away from him but in the end, Ms Chancellor shoots the prime minister in the chest with a bullet, to save Grace. At the end of the book, it is revealed that it did not kill him, but put him in a coma. Grace later discovers that the prime minister, having heard she suspected Dominic of Caroline’s murder, ordered his agent to kill her. He and Ms Chancellor plotted to stop this from happening and luckily they succeed. Grace also finds out that it was actually she who killed her mother because her memory comes back with Dominic's prompting. Everyone tells her it was an accident but she is still horrified with herself. The book ends with Ms Chancellor leading her into a new section of the tunnels, a place that looks particularly ancient and is lined with weapons and books. The final line, spoken by Ms Chancellor, is: “''Come, Grace. There is so much for you to learn.” '''See How They Run' In the second book, Alexei is framed for killing Spence, a West Point Cadet. Grace, Megan, Noah, Rosie, and Lila try to prove that Alexei is innocent. A secret society of girls in Adria is shown to Grace by Ms. Chancellor. Lila also learns about this place. It is a secret, but Grace and Lila tell their friends anyway. In the end of the book, Ms. Chancellor and The Scarred Man/Dominic tell Grace that she is the lost princess of Adria. Personality Grace is pretty reckless. She's fearless and is described as always running towards something by Megan. After her mother's death, she is absolutely sure that the Scarred Man killed her. This shows she's stubborn. She lies only when it benefits herself. Appearance She describes herself in negative connotations. She has blonde bushy hair and brown eyes. She's tall. From her 'adventures' she has bruises all over her body and sometimes broken limbs. She's almost always dirty. 'Relationships' 'Jamie Blakely' She's close to her brother. When they were little, she would follow Alexei and him around. She was hurt when they left her behind. He's also the only person with explicit permission to call her Gracie. 'Caroline Blakely' Grace is the closest with her mother. When her mother died when she was thirteen, she was heartbroken, leading her to believe that she was killed and passionately insisted upon this. When she came back to Embassy Row, she was 'haunted' by her mother. She was greatly affected by having to sleep in her mother's room. She really wants to be just like her mother. Alexei Volkov Alexei was Jamie's best friend. In the first book, Alexei and Grace do talk, but do not appear to be very close. Alexei says that he Jamie put him in charge of "looking after" Grace, and making sure she doesn't die. Grace does not like that he tries to keep her out of trouble. He calls her Gracie, which annoys her. In the second book, they hang out together much more and there are even mentions of a romance growing between them. Grace silently accepts the Alexei calls her Gracie, saying the nickname sounds different when he says it. When Alexei and Grace tell Jamie they need to tell him something important, he says "No, I'm not giving you my blessing." This suggests that Grace and Alexei may have a romantic relationship. Later, they spend time together in a lake, while Alexei has his shirt off. Grace also says she has strange feelings when she is near Alexei. Trivia * Grace can speak both English, and Adrian. Category:Characters Category:Female Characters Category:USA Category:All Fall Down Category:See How They Run Category:Society